Dawn.com
If there is one unmistakable conclusion that can be drawn from reading the Benazir Bhutto commission report, it is this: Ms Bhutto was left at the mercy of her killers.
Who the masterminds of her death are is uncertain. The report simply notes: “Ms Bhutto faced serious threats in Pakistan from a number of sources; these included Al Qaeda, the Taliban and local jihadi groups, and potentially from elements in the Pakistani establishment.” Why any of those groups may have wanted to kill can be speculated about endlessly. But this much is clear: her tragic death was completely avoidable. To even the untrained eye, the security provided to Ms Bhutto was terribly, wretchedly inadequate. Pakistan knows how to protect its VVIPs when it wants to: ask Gen Musharraf or his top generals or his favourite politicians; on his watch, they were as safe as safe can be. But Ms Bhutto was given none of the protection that, among all the pretenders and jesters who received it, she alone deserved to have been given.The exact language of the report bears being repeated, for it points to the presence of, in its purest and most real manifestation, an evil intention: “Particularly inexcusable was the government’s failure to direct provincial authorities to provide Ms Bhutto the same stringent and specific security measures it ordered on 22 October 2007 for two other former prime ministers who belonged to the main political party supporting General Musharraf. This discriminatory treatment is profoundly troubling given the devastating attempt on her life only three days earlier and the specific threats against her which were being tracked by the ISI.”Ms Bhutto could and should have survived the Dec 27, 2007 attack; she didn’t because of the monumental, and very deliberate, sin of omission on the part of Gen Musharraf & Co. Where was the security she deserved and the Pakistani state had the proven capability to offer?The whys can be debated endlessly. Perhaps a clue may lie in new revelations about the ‘deal’ between Ms Bhutto and Gen Musharraf whereby the former prime minister was allowed to return to Pakistan. The UN report notes: “While their discussions included the issue of an eventual power-sharing arrangement, the final terms were never agreed.” Perhaps Gen Musharraf, fighting for survival in the bare-knuckled politics, thought Ms Bhutto’s safety could be a bargaining chip in their negotiations characterised by extreme mutual suspicion. With Gen Musharraf now in self-imposed exile, the country is unlikely to ever learn the truth. But the country will always know this: Ms Bhutto’s killers succeeded because the government deliberately failed to protect her.
They did not pull the trigger or detonate the bomb that killed Benazir Bhutto, but between-the-lines reading of the UN report into her murder makes it clear that they may well have left the door ajar for those that did. She was killed on the watch of President Musharraf whose government did little to protect a woman it perceived as a threat to its power and primacy. It is a testament to its enduring power that the present government is no more eager to get to the bottom of who killed her than its predecessor, and for all the bombast and bluster President Zardari has never been about to put the murderers of Benazir Bhutto in the dock or authorise any investigation that might expose the deeper truths behind the killing. In paragraph after paragraph the report refers to the lack of cooperation that the investigative team experienced at the hands of establishment figures, men who worked for the security services and the various police forces that were questioned. Time after time their oral evidence conflicted with that of video footage or still camera images. The half-truths and untruths that they told exposed each other's duplicity and the report reads as a catalogue of the dishonesty and ineptitude of public officers at just about every level. There is an inescapable impression of purposeful and directed obstruction, which will raise questions in the minds of a suspicious and doubting public already inured to being lied to by successive governments. Of particular note is the failure of the then government to accord Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, the same security as was extended to two other former prime ministers on Oct 22, 2007, men who were Musharraf's political allies.
Also of note is the role of Saud Aziz, chief of police in Rawalpindi, whose decisions denied evidence to investigators. He it was who had the assassination site hosed down less than two hours after the attack, he it was who hosted long lunches for investigators the better to divert them from their duties and he it was who was the primary impediment to any autopsy being conducted. Post-assassination inquiries are exposed as worthless – the much-mentioned Scotland Yard inquiry is spoken of in paragraph 195 as being 'abused' by officers of the Rawalpindi District Police, with 'abused' in this context meaning 'lied to'. Is this the incompetence that is a feature of our security apparatus or is there something more behind the actions that have led to a kind of paralysis in finding out more about the most significant political killing of our time? Television networks, including Geo, have produced some very revealing investigative programmes on the assassination and it is a pity more effort has not been made to explore the leads offered up by them.
We have learned little that we did not already know from the report of the UN commission on the murder of Benazir Bhutto and there appears to be nothing in it to warrant delaying its publication by a fortnight. And the tendency here will be to 'fill in the blanks'. The failure of the Musharraf government and now this government to properly investigate it does nothing to debunk the conspiracies, and the UN report may be the unwitting midwife to obfuscation rather than clarity. There are questions here not brought up by the UN – a body known after all for its sometimes crippling diplomacy and bureaucracy. Why, we must ask, has an administration led by Benazir Bhutto's husband done so little to find out who killed his wife? An inquiry at home should have taken place alongside the UN inquiry. It is something of a mystery why this did not happen. There are quite evidently many angles to the assassination that have not been explored. The UN probe points, albeit subtly, to some of these. There is clearly a great deal still hidden from the public eye. Benazir's killing affected an entire nation and that nation deserves to know more about it.
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